Big Mac Pasta Protest Boils Over

--Opponents of the Americanization of the Italian diet decided to fight fast food with traditional food. They dished out spaghetti yards away from Rome’s first McDonald’s restaurant, which opened recently on the edge of one of the Eternal City’s most famous tourist spots--the Piazza di Spagna, site of the Spanish Steps. The new McDonald’s has prompted protests from those who don’t like the crowds that line up outside it each day, even before it opens. Critics in Mayor Nicola Signorello’s government have suggested that the fast-food chain close that restaurant in exchange for two locations away from the heart of the historic city’s center. Italian participants in the spaghetti protest said, however, that they don’t want any American-style fast food in the Italian capital. “What disturbs us the most is the Americanization of our life,” said Luciano de Crescenzo, an author who attended the rally organized by the Committee of Public Health Against the Degradation of the City. “Anyway, Neapolitans have always had their fast food,” De Crescenzo conceded. “It’s called pizza.”

--A few days after he took a bride himself, Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee A. Iacocca announced that his daughter, Kathryn, 26, plans to marry Ned Hentz, a writer for a New York advertising agency, in June in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. Kathryn, whose mother, Mary, died of diabetes in 1983, is president of the Iacocca Foundation, a philanthropic organization dedicated to diabetes research.

--Designer Calvin Klein has joined actress Elizabeth Taylor as a co-host of the April 29 AIDS benefit that is being sponsored by the fashion, fragrance and cosmetics industries in New York. “I am committed to assist in finding a solution to this devastating epidemic,” Klein said.

--New Yorkers are trying to make a few bucks during the Statue of Liberty’s 100th birthday bash on the Fourth of July weekend by renting out rooftop space for private parties. “The view is fabulous, so we decided, ‘Hey, why not rent the roof to a corporation?’ ” said Anne English, who owns a south Brooklyn building with a clear view of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. “I hear people are getting astronomical amounts, like $50,000, to rent out rooftops. And why not? This is the Statue of Liberty. You know: Mom, apple pie, the flag--and big bucks,” English told Newsday, the Long Island newspaper. The birthday party for the statue will feature the largest fireworks display and parade of tall ships in the nation’s history.